deepstash
Beta
Where There's Stress, There's a Story
How our mind works
The mind is an extremely powerful connect-the-dots machine, always making rapid associations between what it notices, triggering any one of millions of memories or projections about the future.
Essentially, the mind is making stories: sequences of events, past or future, where you stand to gain or lose something.
258 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
4
Key Ideas
A silent retreat
Its basic idea is to see how quiet the mind can get when you stop feeding it entertainment, conversation, and daydreams.
It provides the environment for noticing what’s happening inside you and around you, and come back to that when you get distracted.
How stress is born
A certain desperation grows around the needs you face in these stories, which creates real stress, usually over nothing. Is it actually useful, or merely addictive, to continually imagine a confrontation with a driver that cut you off on the way to work this morning?
These stories are just a natural by-product of the mind's ability to make connections between similar thoughts, but they generate real stress.
Find the story, leave it unfinished
Every time you experience stress, it’s a response to a narrative in the mind, a story about something you feel you need to have happen or prevent from happening.
When you notice stress rising at some random moment, find the story. Just leave the narrative unfinished and go back to what you were doing before the storytelling started.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
4
Key Ideas
Dealing with change
And here’s a secret: actually, we’re always in times of change. If you’re waiting for things to settle down, it’s a beau...
How our mind reacts to change
- It complains. It doesn’t like change that it didn’t choose.
- It gets angry at others. It blames and might lash out at them.
- It looks for comfort, for a return to what you’re used to, what you know, what you’ve always gone to for comfort.
- It tries to get control. This can be stressful, trying to control the massively uncontrollable.
one more idea
13
Key Ideas
Integrating journaling in your daily life
The biggest mistake is to journal only in reaction to something that is going on, instead of letting it be part of a system.
Make writing in your personal journal part of your every...
Benefits of a journal
- When you keep a journal, you can look back on important life events to read about how you felt at the time. You may also be able to learn from these past experiences.
- Writing about traumatic events results in physical and psychological health benefits. Journaling focuses on understanding traumatic events and makes people see these events with an extra level of clarity.
Schedule journaling time
Start your daily journal off on the right foot by scheduling your writing for a set time every day.
- If you find your mind is most active in the morning, wake up 15 to 20 minutes earlier and jot down your thoughts then.
- If you prefer to record everything after the day is over, then make it an evening activity before you go to bed.
10 more ideas
3
Key Ideas
The Elixir of Life
Insomniacs must know that sleep is natural, and normal, with each of us having the ...
Tips for Sleeping
- Get up at the same time every morning.
- Write affirmations to tell yourself that your body knows how to sleep.
- Don't involve your over-thinking mind too much.
- Use your bed is for sleep and sex only.
- Don't lie awake for more than 20 minutes on the bed, and if you can't sleep, get up and try to do some calming activity like folding laundry.
The Enemy of Sleep
Our body will take care of itself if left on its own. It is our mind which is the culprit, running like a motor, inducing low-grade anxiety inside us.
Sleep is not something you have to do, but something which happens naturally to you. If an insomniac forgets that he is an insomniac, he will have a good night's sleep.